


Later On

by Oodles



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Fluff, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M, Post Recompletion, it's not overtly shippy but I do ship them so read my subtext, preslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-15 17:26:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18674191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oodles/pseuds/Oodles
Summary: This life will weigh on him.





	Later On

_I have so very much to learn. This is all I know._

Recompleted implies he was ever whole and this is something Isa is beginning to doubt. The memory he had of _before_ has rusted over time. Something he has learned: memories are breakable, and his own tight grasp of them no doubt led to their disintegration. 

There were things he cared to remember, and things that he wished to let go of, and those two things were not always in his control. 

How he would have loved to forget the hands around his throat. After all, without a heart, that was an easy place to wound him. Oh, but that was a lie as well. There was always a heart there, it just refused to beat on command. It did not do as Saix instructed, so he ignored those wild pangs when they did arise. 

Now, Isa is awake and his chest has not stopped hurting. All that time spent turning a blind eye only made it that much harder for him now. Another thing he has learned: emotions are not meant to be controlled and now he is making the acquaintance of the feral creature that lives inside him. The creature he starved for years. 

Lea can see that something isn’t right, but every time it feels like he is going to ask, Isa doesn’t give him the chance. _Don’t worry about me._ He isn’t ready. Maybe he never will be. It is already too much to have Lea face Isa without anger. 

By all accounts, Lea should be furious, and the fact that he isn’t feels like some kind of trap. The creature inside Isa certainly doesn’t trust it. It screams betrayal and anger and pain whenever it sees Lea. Not for Isa’s sake, but for Lea’s. 

Such terrible things he’d done. Saix. Isa. It doesn’t really matter what name he was called. The actions were his. There is no running from that. 

-

They are staying in Twilight Town, because of course. That old mansion turned out to be useful for something: housing the ones recovered who couldn’t go anywhere else. Xion, Roxas, Lea and Isa certainly had no home to return to. But it is nothing short of bizarre for Isa to suddenly be here, nothing to do, nowhere to go— purposeless beyond fixing up this building. 

This town does not belong to him, but no place really does anymore. 

“Isa?” 

He turns to see Lea standing behind him, hands in his pockets. Isa faces the window again. He’d taken to this old library when they’d first arrived, moving a desk right up against the window to be in the sun while he read. All he has now are books, anyway. 

“Figured you’d be here,” Lea says, leaning his back to the desk beside Isa’s chair. “Roxas and Xion wanted to take the train over to the other part of town today. Did you want to come with?”

Isa glances back out the window into the woods beyond. It seems a perfect day for such an excursion. “I’m not sure I’m up for it.”

Lea doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Isa doesn’t care to see the disappointment inevitably on Lea’s face, so he turns back to his open book— only to startle at the hand softly placed on his shoulder. 

“You can take as much time as you want,” Lea says. 

Isa’s gaze immediately drifts from the book. “For what?”

“Whatever you need,” Lea says. “To feel okay.”

Isa lifts his hand up, resting his chin on it, and dog-ears the page he is on. “The others… they still call you Axel.”

“Yeah,” he responds with a laugh. “They don’t know me any other way.”

“Doesn’t it… remind you of awful things?” Isa asks, gaze unfocused on the light coming in through the window. 

Lea squeezes his shoulder before letting go of him. “No.”

Isa thinks he will leave it at that, but Lea hops onto the desk, sitting with his back to the glass. 

“I like the name, actually,” he goes on. “Makes me think that, even after royally screwing everything up, those two still want me in their corner. The others came around too, and… Kairi’s not even mad at me.” He chuckles, staring at his own shadow cast across the floor of the library. “She’s probably got the most right to be pissed, but now she calls me her friend.”

Isa watches the shifting expressions on Lea’s— Axel’s— face. So much there, so much emotion to be experienced. Every little thought that comes into Axel’s brain finds its way onto his face. Axel welcomes it— feelings, all of them. Good and bad. 

“We can go by whatever we want,” Axel says, leaning his hand on the desk between them, excited by this revelation.

“How are you not drowning?” Isa blurts it out, voice gone quiet, unable to share that hopeful look. He did not intend to start this conversation, but that creature inside him is restless and howling. 

“I am,” Axel says, smiling as he does. “I’ve been out of my depth since day one. If you think I know what I’m doing, you’re giving me far too much credit.”

Isa frowns at him. It is infuriating. “You cannot expect me to believe that. You’ve had more time to adjust, you must know this better. You— you have… ” His hands are fists and he struggles to unclench them. _How can he act so clueless?_ Wrenching his gaze off of Axel and onto the cover of his book, Isa takes a breath. “How do I stop it from hurting so much?”

Sliding forward on the desk, Axel puts his arms around Isa’s shoulders and pulls the two of them together. Isa grits his teeth, face turned into Axel’s chest, but he can’t get his hands to relax. He can’t get any part of him to obey.

“You ask your friends for help,” Axel answers quietly, his own face pressed to the top of Isa’s head. 

Strangely, this seems to soothe the anger running its course through Isa’s chest. Another thing learned: sometimes, showing weakness will heal it faster.

“You’ll get there,” Axel says, only holding Isa tighter. “But, it’s okay if you trip a few times on the way.”

Axel’s heart beats so loudly. Isa turns his face just to hear it better. Does his now sound just as riotous? Or is it only Axel, so full of life? Isa finally opens his hands, pulls them off the desk and returns the hug. Their two shadows meld into one shape across the floor. Isa flattens his ear right against Axel’s chest and for a moment it seems loud enough, it could even beat for two. 

Still holding onto Axel’s old self, perhaps? Or, maybe— no. It’s too selfish to think that he hasn’t once let go of Isa. Then again… stranger things have happened to them.

“Have you been holding onto me this whole time?” Isa asks. He pulls away to stare at Axel’s chest, as if he can see inside and pick apart the pieces that still belong to him. Blue threads amidst all that fire. 

“Someone had to,” Axel says. “You gotta admit, you got a little distracted there.”

Isa puts his hand over that beating drum in Axel’s chest. 

“You want it back?” Axel asks. 

“No,” Isa says. 

He has been learning this most difficult lesson a little bit at a time, every day, for years. Through everyone he has met, but mostly through Axel, he sees it clearest. A heart is stronger when shared. 

Axel sets a single finger on Isa’s chest, tapping twice. “Anything of me left in there?”

For the first time since waking, Isa smiles at him. He cannot answer this question, not yet, he isn’t ready. But he knows.

_You are all that is left in there._

**Author's Note:**

> Listen I do ship these two immensely but I also believe that canonically, it would take Isa one thousand years to allow himself to admit that he's stupidly in love and another thousand years before he let himself believe he could be good for Axel/Lea ever again. 
> 
> as usual, if you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all :)


End file.
